In Ellenville, talk of Walmart split along pro and con lines

ELLENVILLE — For all its vastness, the building that will become the region's newest Walmart this fall has a low profile.

Its earth-tone facade in the Napanoch Valley Mall blends easily into the landscape, barely visible from Route 209. The neon and parking lot lights – the cars and customers – have yet to arrive.

But everywhere else, Walmart looms large in the business plans, the imaginations, the dreams and the nightmares of this struggling, job-hungry village of small shops.

Village Manager Mary Sheeley is only too aware of the shopkeepers' fears. Yet, she can't ignore the number one reason she feels it's needed, the reason the larger community has welcomed Walmart in public hearings:“We have 19 percent unemployment. That's huge.”

“Huge” is a word that comes to mind easily when discussing Walmart. The company's numbers are almost unimaginable. More than 245 million customers and members visit Walmart's 10,800 stores in 27 countries every year. It had sales of roughly $466 billion in fiscal year 2013 and employs 2.2 million people worldwide. If Walmart were a country, its economy would be the 25th largest in the world.

Ellenville's numbers are sobering and only have gotten worse throughout the years: a shrinking population that barely cracked 4,000 people in 2010, a per-capita income of $15,000. Twenty-three percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Walmart's promise of some 300 jobs has proven impossible to resist.

This is a community in need of help. In need of saving. And that's what Walmart literally says it's offering Ellenville and the world. Its corporate motto is “Saving people money so they can live better.”

Walmart's many enemies see it differently. Walmart, they say, feeds on small businesses, gutting them and leaving their host community for dead.

All of which begs the question: Will Walmart save or swallow Ellenville?

Ray Matthews believes it's important to keep emotion out of the conversation when talking about Walmart. Matthews is the proprietor, along with his father, of the pharmacy that's borne the family name for 75 years,

Matthews speaks in quiet but intense tones. One of the company's statements has stuck in his craw: “They said they wish to capture 60 percent of the retail market – that's going to affect us all.”

He hesitates, not wishing to risk emotion. He takes a rhetorical tack. “Will those businesses in town – groceries, hardware, pharmacy – will they be able to economically survive with only four out of ten people entering their store?”

Then he answers his own question.

“Matthews Pharmacy can't. Economically, four out of 10 isn't a break even point.”

Matthews sees hidden costs in the deal, alleging that after Walmart wins a community's approval to build, it typically tries to reduce its property tax assessment – as it did in the Town of Thompson, says its supervisor, Tony Cellini.

“So they wind up suing the people – the taxpayers – who shop there,” he said.

Bella Volchik's business is a three-minute walk to Walmart's front door.

She couldn't be more pleased. Her newly re-named “Russky on the Hudson” wine and liquor store moved to the new location late last year.

Volchik and her business partner, Anthony Zlatkin, are Walmart's biggest fans. In 2009, when the local ShopRite filed a lawsuit aimed at stopping Walmart from locating in the Town of Wawarsing, she and Zlatkin started a letter drive asking the supermarket's parent company to withdraw the suit.

The campaign attracted nearly 500 letters. The suit proceeded, she said, and was ultimately dismissed.

“And I'd do it all again,” she said last week. “People from all around here want Walmart.”

Volchik speaks exuberantly about the possibilities presented by Walmart's arrival – increased traffic and the possibility of other large companies settling in the neighborhood.

The positive effects are already happening, she said. People are already being interviewed for possible jobs that start at about $10 an hour – “people who have been out of work for years.”

Volchik has faced job and income loss directly. Two years ago, she said, business at her previous location was so bad she took a job at a local warehouse distributor, working the night shift, loading tractor trailers and working for $11.25 an hour.

“It was terrible, but necessary.”

Now, she said, she's ready to reap the harvest of what she's fought for.

When it comes to competition, Dick Peters has seen it all during 43 years in business. He's always believed in the need for a medium-sized community grocery store like his, and he's got four decades of success with which to back that belief up.

He ticks off the names of some previous, much larger competitors who were supposed to spell his medium-size grocery's demise.

“Great American. Grand Union.”

Remember them?

ShopRite came to town in 1996. They're both still in business.

So there's room, he believes, for Peters' 10,000-square-foot grocery less than a mile from a Walmart that measures 140,000 square feet.

Peters knows he can't go head-to-head with Walmart on prices, but he's counting on customer loyalty, an emphasis on local natural goods and organics to maintain his own against the neighboring behemoth.

“But what concerns me is that with the poor economy, the pie is getting sliced thinner, without any growth.”

Along with those departed supermarkets, he's seen his customer base erode over the years with the shuttering of the community's blue-collar manufacturing plants.

“I make no bones about it. They are a threat. Still, there's a spot for us. We'll be OK.”

jhorrigan@th-record.com

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